Jacob
High School Senior
$8,000 winner
“Ryan’s guidance with essay writing helped me create the essays I needed to win.”
My Story
Hi, I’m Ryan Kelly, founder of Scholarship Navigator.
After I won $164,284 in scholarships and graduated college debt-free, I started Scholarship Navigator to help other families figure out what my mom and I had to learn the hard way: how to find legitimate, lesser-known scholarships, know which opportunities are actually worth the effort, and use the right strategies to give their student a stronger chance of winning.
If college is in your student’s future, that’s what I’m here to help you do.
$164,284Personally won in scholarships
Nearly $3 millionWon by students and families using Scholarship Navigator
How this started
So how did I go from $0 to $164,284 in scholarships?
During high school, I realized that if I didn’t figure out a way to pay for college, I’d have some hefty student loans to deal with and a lot of debt straight out of college.
I was determined to find a better way to fund my college education.
My mom and I had no idea where to begin, but we started searching and applying anyway. I tried different things, figured out what wasn’t working, and slowly started learning better strategies through a lot of trial and error.
My very first scholarship win earned me $100, and I was ecstatic.
Now...I’m sure there were plenty of people who could have told me, “Ryan...are you kidding? That’s not even going to buy you a college textbook.”
And they would have been right.
But that small taste of success told me something different.
If I could win $100, why not $1,000? $10,000? $100,000?!
And so it began.
I started figuring out how to find legitimate, lesser-known scholarships and look for opportunities where I wasn’t always competing against the same huge pool of students. I also figured out how to tell my personal story in applications and essays in a way that gave scholarship judges a reason to remember me, even though, to be honest, I wasn’t the best writer.
I kept applying all the way through my senior year of college.
And even though I started from ground zero, I ultimately won $164,284 in scholarships, enough to cover my college costs and allow me to graduate debt-free.
My scholarships even helped cover a semester in Washington, D.C., books, fees, and other college expenses.
That first $100 scholarship turned into something I never could have imagined when I started.
Why I started Scholarship Navigator
Then other families started asking me, “Can you teach us what you did?”
At first, it was family friends asking me for scholarship advice.
Then they started winning, too.
And I realized other families were struggling with the exact same questions my mom and I had struggled with:
- Where do we even find the good scholarships?
- Does our income hurt us?
- What if my student doesn’t have perfect grades or athletic ability?
- How do we know which scholarships are actually worth the time?
- And what makes one application stand out from all the others?
So in 2019, I founded Scholarship Navigator to make the scholarship process easier to understand and much more strategic for other families.
I took the strategies I had spent years figuring out for myself and started teaching families how to find better opportunities, build stronger applications, and stop feeling like they were blindly guessing their way through the process.
Since then, students and families using Scholarship Navigator have gone on to win nearly $3 million in scholarships of their own.
And that is still one of my favorite parts of what I get to do.
The strategy
Scholarships become a lot less overwhelming when you actually know the right strategies.
There are thousands of scholarships out there.
The problem is that most families have never been taught how to approach them strategically.
I don’t believe the answer is simply opening a giant scholarship website and applying to everything you see.
I teach families how to do three things differently:
- 1
Find legitimate, lesser-known and less-competitive opportunities
Learn how to look beyond only the biggest national awards and giant databases, find legitimate scholarships most families may never hear about, and look for opportunities where your student may face less competition or be a much better fit.
Learn how to find scholarships - 2
Build stronger applications
Help your student communicate what they’ve actually done, what they care about, what they’ve learned, and where they’re going in a way that is specific, memorable, and true to them.
Learn how to win scholarships - 3
Apply, rinse, repeat
Get organized, prepare useful material ahead of time, and reuse your strongest work intelligently instead of starting from a completely blank page every single time.
Learn how to apply for scholarships
The goal isn’t to turn scholarships into another full-time job. It’s to give your family a real strategy for knowing where to look, what’s worth the effort, and how to put together stronger applications once you find the right opportunities.
Who does this work for?
Who do my scholarship strategies work for?
Probably far more kinds of students and families than most people realize.
- High school students, including seniors (you’re not too late!)
- Current college students (freshmen through seniors)
- Middle school students (Grades 5–8)
- Parents who want to help their student navigate the scholarship process
- Average students (you don’t need straight A’s)
- Students without an impressive résumé of awards or activities
- Students who aren’t athletes
- Students who are athletes
- Students from middle- and upper-income families (even if you don’t qualify for need-based aid)
- Students from low-income families
- Homeschooled students
- Students who have never applied for a scholarship before
- Students who have applied before, but haven’t won yet
- Families who don’t qualify for much, or any, need-based aid
- Community college students
- Trade & certificate program students
- Students pursuing 2-year or 4-year degrees
- Graduate students
- Transfer students
- Adult & returning students
- Gap-year students
- Military families
- U.S. citizens living abroad
- Permanent U.S. residents
- Public & Private school students
- Students who don’t know what they want to major in yet
- Students who have already won scholarships, and want to win more
You don’t need the stereotypical “perfect scholarship student” to have opportunities worth pursuing.
Scholarships can be based on far more than grades, athletics or financial need. Different providers are looking for different students.
The strategy is learning where to look, which opportunities make sense for your student, and how to approach those applications well.
Success stories
Real students. Real scholarship wins.
Isaac
College Freshman
$10,000 winner
Isaac hadn’t applied for a scholarship until freshman year of college. With Ryan’s guidance, he became a $10,000 winner.
Emily
10th Grade
$5,000 winner
“Because of Ryan, I found out about this scholarship and could participate. Ryan helped me brainstorm essays that were powerful and one-of-a-kind.”
Where should you start?
Okay...so where do we start?
If you’re new to Scholarship Navigator, start with my free 30-minute scholarship class.
I’ll show you the bigger picture of the strategy I teach families to use: where better scholarship opportunities can be found, how to think about which ones are actually worth your student’s time, and how to approach the process without feeling completely overwhelmed.
Take the Free 30-Minute Scholarship Class
Already know you want the complete step-by-step system?
See the Program Used by Families Who Have Won Nearly $3 MillionStill looking around first? Explore Scholarship Help
